


Peace-Weaver

by WorldofBubbles



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Arranged Marriage, Eventual Happy Ending, Force? Fate? same thing, Give me the rainbow vomit that is Thor Ragnarok, Gods be like that, Hurt Kylo Ren, Implied/Referenced Incest, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Loss of Virginity, Magic, Multi, Mythology References, Naive Rey, Playing around too much with Norse mythology, Rating May Change, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Secret Identity, Seduction to the Dark Side, Sexual Tension, medium burn?, mentions of Padme and Anakin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24050944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorldofBubbles/pseuds/WorldofBubbles
Summary: A son kills his father, throwing the Nine Worlds into disarray. As war rages on across the cosmos, a young goddess wanders the desolate landscape of Jakku, desperately trying to salvage what remains while awaiting her mother’s return. That is, until a stray god crash lands on her world and upends her entire existence. Norse Mythology AU.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Stranger

_It is not in the stars to hold our destiny_

_But in ourselves_

_\--William Shakespeare_

* * *

No god has fallen into the Ginnungagap and lived to tell the tale. 

Once, in a time before he was called Kylo Ren, his mother told him that the Nine Worlds had been built on cycles of vengeance. 

_“I thought the Nine Worlds were built around a tree,”_ he told her, always one to talk and never one to listen. 

He understands it now. His fall into the Ginnungagap is a way for the universe to seek its retribution. For what, he cannot be sure. All the sins he has committed over the years have blended together like threads in a tapestry. To unravel one is to unravel all. 

His broken body floats aimlessly through the void, having long given up the fight to search for the path. His eyes are not meant for the world between worlds and he has long strayed from the cosmic battlefield. Where Kylo heard war cries in the distance, they have now gone, along with any glance of his comrades. 

_Alone. What a perfect way to die._

His hands still clutch at the wounds on his abdomen. That is to say nothing of the deep wound on his face. Perhaps, under normal circumstances, he would hope his right eye still intact but it won’t do him any good against Chaos.

Never in his life did Kylo think the monster that haunted his childhood dreams – a mass that devoured the very stars – could put fear into him now. But neither did he believe the _volva’s_ words that this march into the Ginnungagap would be his last.

He closes his eyes with the faint hope that Chaos will swallow him quickly and put an end to this accursed existence. He drifts into the void, waiting for death to come.

Though it is hard to tell at what point he has died. He swears it must be when the fever dreams come. 

A world of eternal summer opens up to him, a far cry from the darkness of the world between worlds. Mountains of sand give way to grasslands shimmering with flowers. Though this place radiates with deceptive patches of green, he can smell a sickness on the air. And beneath it all – _his enemy_. Though not as he remembers her.

“ _Kira_ ,” Kylo murmurs, but his voice is swallowed up – by the void or an afterlife, he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of anything at this point, but he’s spent years memorizing the lines of her battle-hardened face. This has to be her. 

Though she seems younger, more at ease. Gone are the war braids, gone is her armor. She only wears a pale, light shift belonging to that of a peasant as waves of blonde hair cascade down her back and drift along in the mild breeze. 

And by her side, she drags along a child through the knee-high grass. 

“Focus, Rey!” Kira snaps, but it hardly reaches the normal malice of her battle call that Kylo has grown accustomed to.

“I don’t want to.” The girl – all long legs and sharp edges – claws at the goddess’s skirts. “Carry me, please!”

“No, Rey.” Her face softens with a tender light Kylo Ren would see in glimpses of his own mother, again, back in the time before he was called Kylo Ren. He finds it hard to reconcile the two: Kira the shieldmaiden and Kira the mother. “You’re getting too big for me to carry.”

“But my feet are tired.” One more pout is enough to break the goddess.

Kira scoops up the girl. “If you never walk, you’ll never feel the magick of Mother Earth beneath you.” She tucks a dark lock behind her daughter’s ear. “You’ll never learn how to make the flowers bloom.”

“But that’s your job,” Rey grumbles.

“It’s yours too.” She smirks. “Jakku needs a lot of attention. You two are alike in that way.”

The girl’s eagle eyes hone in on a figure in the distance. “Who’s that?”

Her embrace tightens and Kira looks ready to flee in the opposite direction. But Rey is quicker, kicking out of her mother’s hold and sprinting across the plains. The goddess follows, though her merciless mask returns.

“Poe Dameron,” she calls out in a tone that suggests this vagrant is hardly welcome here. 

Poe smiles as they near, breaking his stare to sweep it across the landscape. “Which of Padme’s bones do you think they buried here?”

Kira crosses her arms, face still stoic. But from Rey it earns him a toothy grin, as the story of the Great Wolf often does for vicious little children eager to know of the monster that tore the Earth Mother apart and made the Nine Worlds from her remain.

“Whatever it was, the damn wolf must have fractured it into a million pieces,” Poe continues, the humor from his face fading. “Jakku’s a finicky world to grow any sort of life on.”

“For you, maybe,” the girl shoots back. 

Poe snorts. “She’s spunky.”

An exasperated Kira gets straight to the point. “What are you doing here, Poe?” 

A clouded look passes over his eyes. “A message from… a favor.” He spares one last glance in Rey’s direction, though it is now devoid of any warmth. “Can we talk alone?”

The goddess does not address him with an answer, but she dips down on one knee and grasps onto her daughter’s hands. “You have the seeds, Rey?” The girl nods. “Practice while I’m gone, won’t you?”

She frowns. “How long will that be?”

“I’ll be back sooner than you know it. I promise.”

An easy deception for a child, but Kylo knows the truth. _She isn’t coming back._

The image of the girl waiting on the grasslands begins to fade. _Maybe the void has taken her too,_ Kylo thinks, his last thought before being consumed.

* * *

_At least the sunrise is beautiful._

A common mantra Rey often tells herself just to get out of bed in the morning. Otherwise, her only other option is to desiccate out in the desert sun and that isn’t really an option she can take. 

_Who knows? This could be the day that she comes back._

Rey crawls out from beneath thin, dusty blankets. She sighs before stretching out sun-spotted limbs like a now extinct sand cat. 

She hums a soft tune as she quickly dresses for her day: pale tattered robes to deflect the sun harsh rays and a leather belt to hold it all up. Binding her hair up in three chignons is equally as important. Less hair on her face means fewer interruptions during her work. 

The tent breaks down with ease beneath her practiced movements. Rey gathers the poles and the leather tarp into the dusty sled resting at the edge of the site. She collects the rest of her belongings to load up as well, mostly an assortment of clay jars for the purpose of hiding various food and medicinal materials. But, if her memory serves her well, whatever remained in them has long run out and in dire need of replacement. Rey tosses them in the sled too. 

She spares one last glance at the ashen fire pit. She snaps her fingers once, twice – and a spark of magick erupts at her fingertips. Rey shields it from the harsh landscape, focusing all of her concentration just to keep it from going out. 

_Just breathe._

Gently, Rey sits it against the ruins of the fire pit. She buries the spark beneath the coarse sands and prays it will be enough. Though she won’t see the fruits of her labor until she returns to this parcel of land for several weeks to come. 

With little ceremony, Rey straps the ends of her sled to the worn loops on her belt and sets off into the never-ending sea of sand. Judging by the horizon, the sun will rise soon. The sooner she reaches the freshly sown garden patches, the better. 

Hours pass before she spots a handful of stalks swaying in the distance as if to welcome her. In her earlier days of roaming Jakku, when the water had just run out and her immortal body had not grown accustomed to thirst, she would have feared such a sight to be a mirage. But after so many years spent here, she knows these invisible routes as well as the cracks on her palms. 

The tent must go back up – a much more difficult feat when her hands shake both from the exhausting heat of high noon and the anticipation of food to fill her belly for a few days to come. 

With no time to waste, Rey dives into the field – first, counting her losses. _Too many._ Dried flowers crunch beneath her worn boots. Never once has she underestimated the strength of Jakku’s rancid breath. She scavenges them anyway for viable seeds and dry pieces to be used as tinder later. 

Rey plucks the survivors next. The swaying desert barley falls first against her rusty sickle. She remains certain that any moment longer against the brutal weather and they would’ve been sapped of whatever little moisture still remains. She turns to dig up the tubers next, heads already visible below the shifting sands. The spiky herbs are saved for last, knowing stray thorns never fail to slice into her hands. 

By the time all the herbs have been picked and meager crops cut and processed, the sun sets into various hues of orange and purple. She decides to start a fire now while the last rays of sunlight are still available to her. 

Rey finally marks another line against the inside of her sled, trying not to think of the multitude of other lines made to track the days. She had long given up counting them when the number rose to the thousands. 

She prepares her meal for the night – the first in days. Though Rey’s hunger is more of a nuisance than a matter of life and death, she scarfs the food down in a frenzy regardless. She even goes as far as to lick the plate. Rey shakes her head at her own foolishness. 

Still, she can’t help but think how nice it would be to have even one drop of water. But ideas like _water_ and _Jakku_ are worlds apart, though it hasn’t always been that way. 

She runs over her mental list of tasks, wondering if she’s forgotten anything. She hasn’t, of course, if her mind is lax enough to wander. But now, Rey finds herself left with the silence. Silence, she knows, gives way to loneliness. For every line on her sled is a reminder that she has spent another day without _her_. 

Rey finally glances up at a blanket of stars. “You make it hard sometimes,” she says aloud as if her mother can hear her. A nightly ritual to keep the insanity at bay. “To wait.” Little Rey, who has always been so good at waiting. 

To see the nighttime sky is to see the Ginnungagap, which spreads out before her like a doorway into the eight other Worlds she has long given up hope of ever seeing. Miniscule figures fight within the void, like shooting stars spiraling and crashing into each other. A monotonous event, it seems, that Rey has been gazing upon her entire life. 

“They’re fighting again. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve gone up to join them.” Though that wouldn’t make much sense, considering a shieldmaiden never marches off to battle without her shield – the same dinged scrap of metal Rey now uses for her sled. “I only wish you would’ve brought me with you.”

A flash of light arcs across the skyline, seemingly out of nowhere. Much more solid than any other figure she can see within the Ginnungagap.

A comet.

Not an uncommon sight. _You ought to make a wish_. Then again, there is only one thing Rey has ever wanted. To voice it is pointless, so instead, Rey closes her eyes, casting her hopes and dreams out to it. To carry them away wherever the comet may land. 

When she opens her eyes, she expects the comet to have disappeared, like so many others before it. So she frowns when she stills finds it in her line of sight. Getting closer. 

Rey slowly rises to her feet. A quick assessment of its trajectory suggests that the comet won’t hit her – this is certainly not the first debris to have fallen from the heavens and land upon Jakku – but it won’t be far either. 

Throwing all common sense to the wind, she shrugs out of her blankets and sprints.

The comet crashes long before she can reach it. Rey hears the impact, feels a shockwave rippling across the desert that sends a wave of dust hurdling her way. She crosses her arms to brace herself against the oncoming cloud, crushing her eyes and lips impossibly tight to prevent the sand from fighting its way in, before pressing forward. 

A fresh chasm greets her with a blanket of dust still hanging over it. Rey leaps into the crash site. Eyes still screwed shut, she claws her way to the center. She can’t say why – the thoughts have floated away from her like the vaporized sand plunging into the midnight air. 

Instead, Rey finds herself being led by a flicker of magick – like a moth drawn to flame. Truly, she has no idea what she’ll find at the center of the crash. Her mother told her that stars were but flaming balls of gas, leftover dust from wide-ranging Chaos. 

So Rey certainly does not expect to see a wraith strewn about the bottom of the chasm. She can’t help but chide herself for being so stupid. She should turn back while she still can, while she is still safe. 

But the flicker… _it’s coming from the wraith._

Rey drops down to touch it, to marvel and wonder. It’s been so long since she has seen another living thing.

Instead of flesh, her fingers brush against frigid metal. A mask, though the entire right side is broken. And beneath it – a closed eye not so different from her own. And so much blood. Rey touches the wraith’s chest. Beneath her hand, a weak heartbeat trembles. _Very much alive_.

She hauls him from the crash site. This one is much larger than her and it takes every ounce of strength and then some – she has to pull from the little reserves of magick she normally saves for growing up the gardens. But something, deep inside, tells her that this is worth every drop. 

From a fall like that, Rey does not expect him to wake so soon. She can see her campfire in the distance when he springs to life and attempts to shake free from her grip.

“No,” Rey hears from a soft growl. “No, _no!_ ”

She releases him out of shock. She drops to her knees at his side, clawing apart the dented helm from his face. New blood, warm and sticky, paints her fingers. Rey hears a gasp. A hand clenches her robes. 

“Let me die,” he begs. “Let me die.”

Rey pretends not to hear him. She isn’t sure how to tell him that this is just the madness talking – she’s good at fixing things and she can fix him too if he’ll let her. 

The helm nearly shatters in her fingers when she finally rips it loose.

And she sees him beneath all the blood: a pale narrow face, split at an angle by a deep slash. Their eyes meet. His gaze radiates like the Ginnungagap itself, calling out to the spark inside of her. The same feeling that Rey sensed in him before. 

_He’s a god._

“It _is_ you,” he murmurs. 

His words worm their way into her soul and she almost loses sight of her mission. Until the man’s eyes roll back in their sockets. 

_No,_ Rey nearly panics. _I can’t lose him now._

She isn’t sure by what miracle she tows him inside of her tent. Rey rummages through her clay jars, shattering a few between nervous fingers, before finding the herbs picked from today. _Aloe, witch hazel, Echinacea…_ she grinds up whatever she can find into a paste that once healed her own broken bones long ago. Though she had never been at Death’s door and Rey doesn’t know if this will be enough. 

She slathers the paste upon his open wounds. The warrior’s body trembles beneath her sweaty hands. She’s grateful he isn’t awake to scream. 

Rey works tirelessly through the night. She manages to stem the bleeding and straighten a collage of bones before the onset of rapid healing can kick in. By the time rays of light appear on the horizon, only then does she finish. 

She brushes the sweat and dust from her forehead. Rey pauses to take in the quiet of dawn. For once, the silence isn’t out of loneliness.

* * *

Four nights and five days pass before the stranger awakens. 

In all that time, Rey has refused to break apart her campsite and move onto greener pastures. In his condition, she can’t risk such a drastic move. 

As always, she adapts. Her first move is to ration the supplies, particularly the herbs she needs to stall off fever and reapply the healing salve. Tending to the stranger also requires swapping out bandages soaked in dried blood and puss. But, with every passing day, the wounds seal rather nicely and Rey is reassured of her efforts with every breath the stranger takes. However shallow. 

With all of that completed and boredom threatening to sit in, Rey finds ways to keep herself busy. Scouting terrain, reorganizing her belongings… anything to keep her mind distracted from the stranger and his condition. To keep her from thinking about what his presence on Jakku means for her. 

On the fifth day, Rey returns to the campsite by dusk, shivering in her robes as the temperature plummets. In her arms, she juggles scraps of leftover metal from what she can only assume are remains of the stranger’s armor. 

She drops the load when she finds him waiting for her.

Or rather, lying in the dirt only a few feet away from the tent and facing up at the starry night. Rey rushes over to him, with half a mind to make a joke about a failed escape attempt, though quickly decides against it. He doesn’t even turn his head to look at her as she approaches. 

“It’s cold out here,” Rey tells him. As if on cue, her skin erupts from the shivers. “Please. You need to come back inside.” _Or you’ll die,_ remains unsaid. His condition is still fragile. 

He still doesn’t look at her, only grumbles low in his chest. Perhaps he has lost the ability to speak. Rey sighs. Dragging him back from the crash site had been painful enough. If she’s forced to do it again with him conscious and struggling…

“Cold is good,” she hears from a hoarse whisper. “Numbing. Your witchcraft is not without its bout of agony.”

Without thinking, she leans in closer, though his resulting flinch makes her wish she hadn’t. “If you’re hurting, I can fix—”

“No,” he retorts. “No more witchcraft.”

Rey frowns. “It’s just… magick.” She raises an eyebrow. “Not even _good_ magick at that. Don’t they have that where you’re from?” No, she had sensed the flicker within him. She hadn’t been wrong about that. 

The stranger doesn’t answer.

Again, Rey sighs. She finds herself exhausted – so much so that all reasonable thought flies into the void. She lies down at his side. 

Rey forces herself to look to the nighttime sky, to see what he sees. All she glimpses are twinkling stars shooting across the horizon. Warriors locked in eternal battle, a war in the heavens never-ending. 

_Does he think about home?_ Sometimes Rey swears she can see the other eight Worlds spinning in the cosmic circle. But then she would blink and they’d be gone, just her imagination. She wonders what they’re like.

Rey can feel the heat of that indecipherable gaze upon her. She turns to face the stranger. “You come from up there, don’t you?”

He flinches again when their eyes lock. His are impossibly dark – she was right to think them windows into the Ginnungagap itself.

“The _volva_ …” he rasps, swallowing. “She told me I was fated to die in the world between worlds when I marched into battle. Who are you to have thrown such plans into disarray?” 

Her eyes narrow at his tone, borderline accusatory. “Did you want to die?”

A beat passes before he speaks again. “I don’t know.”

She isn’t sure why his uncertainty unnerves her. She has fought all this time to survive, to _wait,_ never questioning. Until now. “What happened to you up there?” _And is it worth it?_ Rey wants to know. “What’s _been_ happening up there?”

Perhaps he can feel the weight of such questions. Perhaps the stranger, too, isn’t sure how to answer. “Are sure you wouldn’t rather go back inside?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What better day to kick-off a new fic than Revenge of the Sixth?


	2. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Little death trap,” he mutters, though whether he’s referring to her or Jakku, she can’t be sure.  
> Rey says nothing. She has always prided herself in waiting – for a flower to bloom, for her mother to return. She will wait for his recovery too, even if he won’t.

On the seventh day, the stranger sits up. Or rather, bolts up, stirring Rey to consciousness.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she slurs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Pale light from the rising sun paints the tent an ominous blue light.

The stranger shakes his head. His chest heaves as he runs a hand through knotted black hair.

“Knowing you, you probably reopened a wound.” Rey kicks aside her blanket. “Though, I think it’s safe to say your fever’s broken and you might actually live through this.”

His eyes gravitate towards her. Only then does she realize she’s dressed in nothing but her worn trousers and breast wraps. The choice to sleep in them has never bothered her before – until now.

Rey takes a step towards him, snatching strips of cloth from her pile of supplies. His fists clench.

“Bandages.” She waves them in the air. “I need to change them. Will you let me?”

He says nothing, only giving her a tentative nod. Though this is unsurprising – he hasn’t spoken a word since his awakening.

As Rey approaches, she notices the blush rising to his cheeks. She nearly snorts and crouches in front of him. Her suspicious are proven to be correct; Rey notices the cloth has entirely bled through.

“Lean back,” she orders. A beat passes – a small moment of defiance. Rey has half a mind to put her hands on the planes of his chest and force him to do so but then the stranger quickly comes to his senses.

She crosses her arms. “Now, as it stands, I can continue to call you _stranger_. Or… you could tell me your name.”

For the longest time he doesn’t respond, the intensity of his glare aimed away from her now, on a horizon impossibly far away. “Ben.” A whisper so low Rey almost doesn’t hear him. “Ben Solo.”

“I’m Rey,” she offers half-heartedly in return. “Just Rey.”

The side of his mouth twitches, almost as if to smile. She isn’t sure how to respond to that so she sets herself to the task at hand.

Nimble fingers pry apart the sticky, blood-soaked bandages across his midsection. She pokes and prods at the wound – still deep but healing nice enough given their situation. Rey snatches a jar of aloe from a low-lying shelf. A quick dab of her fingers and she smears the gel across his wound. Ben flinches, but otherwise remains still as she clears the dried blood from his skin with her hands. If only cloth weren’t so hard to come by.

“I’ll need to rip the sleeves off your tunic for more cloth.” Rey spares a glance at the dark article of clothing folded up into a makeshift pillow. She had removed it long ago to better assess his injuries. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“Aren’t you worried?” Ben murmurs.

She glances up at him, noticing his blush has grown more vivid in color. “What about?”

His jaw flares, as if his tongue is wrestling for the right words. She finds her eyes drawn to the wound slashed across his face, now a scar since healed. “What others will say?”

Rey blinks slowly. She’s sure he’s insinuating something she can’t quite wrap her head around, but still she says, “Have you seen anyone else around here, Ben Solo?”

“No,” he concedes.

“Good,” she muses. “May I continue?”

Without further conversation, she wraps his abdomen – though now suddenly aware of their proximity and her hands upon his bare skin. _Curse this man._ She had a much easier time when he was asleep and unable to whisper such nonsense.

With no hope of drifting back to sleep herself, Rey attempts to begin her day early. She dresses in her tunic to keep away any more suggestions of impropriety. Though she is aware of his gaze upon her back the whole way through.

She sneaks glances at him when he isn’t looking. _Too large,_ is Rey’s first thought of Ben once she finally sees him in broad daylight. The tent doesn’t allow for standing – only crouching and crawling – but even sitting up this man takes up most of her space. It makes rummaging through her jars incredibly difficult now that she can’t just step over him with ease.

She peers into her food stores. “Are you hungry?” Rey shuffles about the tent, keeping a mental list of her remaining lentil and barley stocks. “You’ll need to recuperate your strength.” Though for a man of his physique, she sincerely doubts her meager rationing will be enough to keep him from shedding considerable weight. The landscape of Jakku is not made to feed a warrior.

“No,” Ben retorts. He briefly closes his eyes. “Water.”

She snorts. “There is none. Hasn’t been for quite some time. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Of course not.” Ben makes no move to hide his displeasure. His cruel smirk warps the scar across his face. “I should’ve known. They always told me Jakku stood for _little death trap._ ”

“Well, they’re not wrong.”

He casts her blanket aside. “I need to find a way off this world.”

“There isn’t—” With gritted teeth, Ben crouches as if to stand. Rey all but pounces on him. “Stop, you’re going to tear something! You can’t just walk around right after you’ve fallen out of the literal sky!”

For a while, he struggles against her until fatigue gets the better of him. Rey holds him tight, though still attempts to wrestle him back onto the pallet as gently as she can. “ _Please_.”

Ben still stares, namely, at her hand against his chest pressing him down flat. Genuine surprise on his face soon gives way to shame. “So,” he drawls with a withering gaze, “I survived the Ginnungagap only to waste away here on Jakku?”

“It won’t come to that. You just have to listen to me.” She removes her hand but it still hovers above his chest, shaking with a slight tremor. “I’ll help you. I promise.”

“Fine,” he sneers. “But no magick.”

* * *

Let it be known that Rey of Jakku keeps her promises.

Teaching a man to walk again isn’t easy and she experiences this firsthand. An entire fortnight passes before Ben’s legs can handle his weight. Though she can’t blame them – even with the rationing, he still towers over her, a great mountain of a man. The first time she slings his arm around her shoulders to share his weight and minimize the wobbling in his legs, both collapse into the sand.

“Heavy,” she puffs out, shrugging Ben off. Whatever madness that helped her pull him from the chasm and all the way home, it certainly is not with her now. And Rey sincerely doubts she will ever see its ilk again. “Sorry.”

She tries again, and by extension, so does Ben as she lifts him off his feet. It becomes easier after a while, propping him up while the spazzing muscles in his calves and thighs build up their resistance once again. Though the process is grueling, for him most of all.

Not a day goes by where Ben doesn’t curse and rage. Cursing Jakku and the shifting sands that cause him to fall nearly a thousand times within a matter of days, raging at his body for not recuperating itself quick enough. But strangely enough, Rey never finds the anger directed at her way. 

Except for one time.

Their day begins like any other: a shared early morning meal spent in silence, Rey’s careful surveying of Ben’s nearly healed wounds before they can proceed with the main event. Though she notices the god seems more tense and she wonders if his time here on Jakku has finally weighed on him.

Whereas he had made such progress the day before, Ben’s feet today must be made of lead. He can hardly go more than two steps before collapsing, Rey tripping along with him. The greater his frustration, the less he relies on her to hold his weight and the quicker he goes down. Perhaps this is what her mother meant when she referred to men as such _idiots._

When Ben falls for what must be the thousandth time, Rey feels a palpable spike in rage. His forearms slam against the ground and he roars. She shields herself on instinct.

An energy rips out of him – scorching and brutal. The ground beneath them shatters. _Actually_ shatters. Heat converts the sand beneath them into rudimentary glass.

“Ben—”

His head whips around to look at her and she swears his eyes are red. But Rey blinks and the foul light shutters. His lips purse into a thin line. “You should have left me at the bottom of that chasm _to die._ ”

Something in her chest tightens. “Maybe I should have. But I didn’t.”

“Little death trap,” he mutters, though whether he’s referring to her or Jakku, she can’t be sure.

Rey says nothing. She has always prided herself in waiting – for a flower to bloom, for her mother to return. She will wait for his recovery too, even if he won’t.

She skirts around the piles of desert glass, which Rey stares at for a moment too long. _If that isn’t magick, then what is it?_

The goddess shakes the thought from her head. She holds out a hand to him, expecting him to take it.

Ben looks to her incredulously, perhaps wondering why she hasn’t run off yet. Rey has a sneaking suspicion that these tantrums of his – either verbal or magickal – serve the purpose of driving others away. Lucky for him, she won’t be deterred so easily.

He considers her hand for many moments still before speaking again. “Your magick…”

Hope flutters in her chest. “Yes?”

“I don’t trust it,” he bites out.

“But?” she prompts.

He lets out a displeased grunt. “If you think it will help—”

“It will,” Rey interrupts, but quickly amends herself. “If you let me.”

Ben narrows his eyes, still so full of suspicion. She can certainly imagine him coming from a world where trust is not easy to come by. Though Rey need not remind him that this is Jakku and whatever happened to him before, whatever led to his fall from the Ginnungagap, does not matter. They are the only two here.

He nods stiffly before taking her hand.

They resume their customary position with Ben’s arm snaked across her shoulders and Rey’s hand cupped at his ribs. Though she can feel the heat of his flesh, his vivid pulse from beneath his tunic, this won’t do for what she has in store.

“Tell me where the pain is.”

“Everywhere.”

Rey rolls her eyes. She can’t be sure if that’s meant to be a joke on his part, but it’s still insufferable without a doubt. “Where it’s _worse_.”

“The base of my spine,” Ben says.

“Okay. Let’s try this.”

Her hand shifts to grip his back. Tepid fingers tuck beneath his tunic and dip below the waist of his trousers. She feels his body stiffen. “Don’t do that,” Rey retorts.

“Brazen woman,” Ben hisses, his voice tighter than it had been before. “You could do to warn a man.”

“And you could do to relax,” she snaps back. Before adding: “Please?”

Another huff of resignation – enough for Rey to continue. She closes her eyes and searches for the reservoir of magick hidden beneath her skin. Though she is more than aware that so much of it lies untapped, she scrambles to grab onto what she can.

Once Rey finds a tight enough grip, she forces it to alight like striking a rock against flint.

She hears Ben’s sharp intake of breath. “Rey—”

Even without eyes, she can see _everything._ Perhaps this is what he had meant, as her magick flits throughout every muscle, every limb to trace the patchwork of hurts this god has sustained since his fall. Every bruise, every break in bone wails at her, begging to pilfer her magick stores and restore Ben to what he once was.

Rey shakes her head and doubles her concentration. It isn’t long until she finds those mangled nerves in his back – his greatest pain of all, perhaps the source of the others.

With invisible hands, Rey’s magick shakes the nerves loose. Ben leans onto her more, as if Rey has rendered him boneless. Before he can smother it, he lets out a groan.

“Easy,” she says with reddened cheeks. A pulse erupts from her fingertips. Muscles twitch and strengthen beneath her hand. “Almost there.”

“Don’t,” he snaps, almost causing Rey to remove her hand. “You’ll need to hold onto some. For later.”

Rey frowns. Ben is right of course; they still need her magick to eat and if she wants to heal him in one fell swoop, it’ll drain her entirely. Yet how he’s surmised this, she isn’t sure.

Confident that she’s taken care of what she can – for now, anyway – Rey peels away her fingers from his flesh. For a moment, there’s only the sound of his labored breathing.

“Remember,” she says, and Ben looks to her with that infinite gaze. “One step at a time.”

He shudders, but this isn’t from pain. Still holding onto her, he straightens his back experimentally. Again, another easy groan shakes loose, but at this point they should be past such embarrassments. 

Nervously, Rey licks her lips. “I’m going to release you. Is that okay?”

For a moment, the warrior that fell from the heavens seems as vulnerable as a baby bird ready to take flight. He nods.

Rey unslings his arm from her shoulders, allowing Ben to bear the brunt of his weight more readily, though still with a careful hand supporting him by his arm.

Without breaking his gaze, Rey makes a countdown in her head. She swears he counts with her. Clutching onto a final breath, her hand lets go.

Ben toddles across the sand, perhaps not much different from his first steps as a child. No pain, no shouting, and, for certain, _no falling._

“Yes!” Rey squeals, attempting – yet failing – to contain her excitement. He stretches his back, marveling at such a motion, before making a few more experimental steps.

Rey smiles so hard it hurts. Long has she tried to perform such impossible feats with her magick, only to turn up empty-handed. But this… “What?”

She catches him staring at her, his lips slightly parted. Ben clears his throat. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry?” Rey nearly chokes.

“Thank you,” he repeats, almost sheepish. “This has been a difficult time for me and I have not adequately expressed my gratitude.”

Her smile remains as she runs a nervous hand through her hair, tucking a brown lock behind her ear. “It’ll get dark soon. We should go back to the shelter before we freeze.”

* * *

They fall into an easy rhythm. For once, Rey doesn’t feel the obsessive need to count her days. She hardly remembers to tack on those lines into her sled.

Ben walks without wobbling. His recovery isn’t finished however – he still has difficulty standing up and crouching down, little mistakes she didn’t have time to fix before he warned her not to overextend herself. Her magick still senses that there is an assortment of bodily injuries she has yet to work out.

 _All in due time,_ Rey reminds herself. _Have patience._

Still, the strides they have taken will make any future tinkering much easier. Other things too, now that Rey sets her sight to the near future.

Ben has calmed greatly since his arrival, opening up a world of possibilities. He doesn’t seem likely to break into a run and escape her, therefore ruining their progress from the past few days. Soon, she can leave this plot of land and move on… though a part of her wonders if Ben will come with her.

A thought to dawdle on at another time.

For now, Rey doesn’t quite feel so comfortable as to break down her tent and travel to new fields. _But_ she can certainly discard the failing garden patch she’s been trying to make do with for the past three weeks and journey to another a few miles off.

Rey tells him this as she slings her staff across her back and packs her sickle and a handful of jars into her sled. Though, admittedly, she stares at her belongings a little longer than intended before sighing, “I’ll only be gone for a few hours.”

A spark of curiosity lights up in his eyes, but Ben smothers it just as quickly. “Very well.”

Rey casts him a suspicious glare. “You won’t do anything stupid, will you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Ben muses.

“Promise?”

He settles against his pallet, his hands clasped behind his head. “I will be here when you return, little Vanir.”

She says nothing to the new epithet he has given her. A wave of emotion wafts up from the pit of her stomach. _Mother promised to return too_. Rey nearly chokes on that thought, shoving it down so deep within that she swears to all the stars above that she will slit her throat before dredging it back up again.

The goddess sets off down the rolling hills of sand, unbeknownst to her that Ben Solo watches her go until her silhouette disappears off into the horizon.

Rey returns by twilight, her jars filled and a bushel of barley held tight to her chest. When she finds her visitor still present, half-leaning out of the tent to bask in the chilling air, her eyes alight.

“Feast your eyes, Solo,” she proclaims. “We’ll be eating stellar tonight.”

Rey lays out the barley on her blanket before positioning her filled jars around it.

Ben does little to mask his grimace. “I wouldn’t exactly call this a feast.”

“It is on Jakku,” she retorts. “This will last us for a week at least.”

“A week if you eat once in that whole period, right?” He snips, earning him a _look._ So quick to ruin her mood, this one. “What? Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“You’re soft. I know how to deal with this world – you don’t.” Rey has half a mind to stick out her tongue at him. “Maybe that makes me take pity on you.”

She expects him to laugh. He doesn’t. Instead, his expression is akin to guilt. “Don’t. You deserve to eat as much as I do.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “I’ll increase my portions by a third. But no more than that.”

“It’s a start,” he grumbles before she sets him on the task of grinding half the barley stock into flour.

Much of everything is a start for them. In his first days conscious and bumbling about on Jakku, Ben had hardly spoken to her. And… she still finds him to be a man of few words, though at least the mistrust between them has eased for the most part.

The next morning, Rey rises with the sun. Not for any particular reason though; Ben is fast asleep and they have food for many days to come. Maybe it’s because she’s been so restless these past few weeks, constantly tending to both her guest and her gardens that she doesn’t know what to do with herself now that both are on the path of steady recovery.

Still in trousers and breast wraps, Rey dashes out of the tent with staff in hand, careful not to disturb the god snoring softly on his pallet. Putting a fair enough distance between herself and the shelter, Rey finally appraises the weapon in her hand.

It had been her mother’s once, crafted in a time when Jakku still harbored low-lying trees. The first plants to die when the droughts ravished the landscape, Rey helpless to save them. Kira made her practice with the staff too, even if it had been too long and awkward to keep up with her small body.

 _You’re the daughter of a shield-maiden,_ mother snipped at her when Rey had dared to complain. _You won’t be defenseless under my watch._

She twists her wrist, spinning the staff in the air, before catching it again. The movement feels all too familiar.

Rey runs through her mother’s set of drills with a vague awareness of how rusty she’s gotten. The staff doesn’t quite move as liquid as it once did. Mother once told her that a weapon such as this is an extension of the body – stiff, unbalanced movements of the staff is to be out of touch with oneself. Rey can’t have that.

She continues with the drills, only pausing once she feels both a trickle of sweat on the back of her neck and thoroughly out of breath.

Ben’s voice rings out, surprisingly close. “Seems like a waste of water, don’t you think?”

Rey dabs at the sweat. So lost in her drills, she hadn’t noticed his approach. “Not necessarily. It’s good to keep the mind busy.”

She finds him standing a short distance away from her, cracking his knuckles. “Should I try my hand at it then?”

“You don’t have a staff.”

A tent pole flies into his hand. The tarp flounders and he flashes a shit-eating smirk. “I beg to disagree.”

“Ben!”

He stalks towards her, the pole looking tiny in his huge hand, his bare shoulders seeming to eclipse the sun. Once again, he's forgotten to wear his tunic but she can't blame him. Such dark, thick material is unsuitable for this climate. And perhaps the view of his sculpted chest isn't so bad.

 _What are you_ saying _?_

“Sit down!” Rey orders, trying to inject steel into her voice even as her eye catches his muscles rippling in time with his feet, now settling into a fighting stance. Perhaps her magick worked on him a bit _too_ well.

“Make me," Ben says with the barest hint of a smile.

Then he snaps forward with a thrust aimed at her face. She yelps, throwing her weapon up with reflexive parry. They meet with a clack she feels in her bones, the sound swallowed up by the vast expanse of nothingness around them. 

Rey breaks away before she can be overpowered. Her eyes size him up in an instant, scanning the places she knows are still tender. If the stubborn oaf wants a beating, he'll certainly get one.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says, though her feet slide into a familiar stance. She tucks the staff close to her body. 

“This should be a quick spar then.” There's no menace to his voice. Instead, Rey sees that rare grin encroaching on the borders of his face. Ben's grip switches and the pole cracks forward. His feet glide over the sands he had tripped over only a week ago. 

Rey twists with her hips and braces her core, but it does little to prepare her against the second reverberation that rattles her hands.

 _Sweet Chaos he's strong._ Though Rey suspects he's kept the extent of his recuperation from her for this very reason. He must be used to enemies underestimating him – and to their detriment.

_We have that in common._

Deftly, Rey displaces his strike and hooks the butt of her staff around his neck. He's too slow to unhook himself. A small tug unbalances Ben enough to send him sprawling into the sand with a dejected _whoosh_. 

He grips his sides. 

“Shit.” Rey can already imagine his abdomen split open and blood soaking into the greedy sands.

She reaches down to turn him over, hearing strangled breaths. Her panic rises. "Ben…?" Their eyes meet - his shimmer with pain, clearly, but also… joy? _He's...laughing?_

"Bastard!"

"Sorry," he manages. With a quick glance she finds his sides covered in sand but still intact, thank the stars. 

Rey grimaces. "Idiot. You need longer to heal before you pull stunts like this."

His laughter ceases. He doesn’t move from his position on the ground.

She offers her hand. “Are you alright?”

Ben nods slowly, his gaze suddenly unreadable. His fingers brush against her palm before wrapping his hand against her own.

“I’m afraid you’re right.” He claims his forgotten staff, before pointing it in her direction. “Again.”

Rey doesn’t have time to tell him _You can’t be serious_ before he charges her. 

A blow lands savagely against her ribs, knocking her in the dirt. She twists and springs, avoiding a second attack but losing her staff in the process. _No matter._

It isn't hard for Rey to imagine him in his prime, leaping with the predatory gait of a sand cat both powerful and lithe. He matches her blow for blow, an echo of the warrior he once was. But this Ben isn't so quick. Her simple feign leads to opportunity: Rey twists away, disarming him in one fluid motion. 

He does not blink.

“Again."

With every strike they throw at each other, it’s akin to breaking through a wall. They drift closer, more entangled, and words seem to pour out from the both of them.

Little things: a comment to improve form, Ben’s incessant demands to keeping going and strike at him harder, Rey’s refusal to _not do that._ Soon giving way to further conversations, namely how Rey learned to wield a staff and how often she practices.

Rey hardly realizes its nightfall until she finds herself shivering. She soon notices she never bothered to put on her tunic, though she finds Ben to be more embarrassed by that realization than herself.

“You’re good,” Ben remarks after setting their fire for the night, “for a scavenger.”

She sits at his side, arranging the bowls of prepared grain before them. “I beat you at least a dozen times!”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “It’s easy to beat a cripple, is it not?”

He passes her a blackened pot with which they normally heat their food. A confident smirk fixes on her lips. “Recover quickly then, dear guest, and then we’ll settle the matter.”

“I don’t doubt that.” He hands her the mixture of barley-flour and seed oil she had once lovingly referred to as _Clay_ – their main meal here on barren Jakku – despite the foul look he had given her. “The quicker you can beat me again, the longer I stay in your makeshift infirmary.”

He takes from a separate bowl, shoving a handful of hulled barely into his mouth.

“As if you haven’t warmed up to the idea of having me around,” she says before she can stop herself.

Ben says nothing in return and Rey wonders just what in the hell she’s doing. Together, they flatten the Clay into little disks to cook within the pot and promptly eat in silence.

She spots an occasional flash amongst the stars and her mind wanders to Ben again. Rey can get used to his presence but even she knows this is only a temporary measure until he finds his way off-world.

At this thought, her hunger dwindles. Rey sets down her portions, despite Ben’s withering glare. She hugs her legs, turning her full attention to the black sky above. “Will you tell me what they are this time?”

“You genuinely don’t know?” He finishes the last of his meal. “Do you know of anything beyond this dry piece of rock?”

She bristles. “When you put it that way—”

“I’m not trying to tease you.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Well, then you have a funny way to express curiosity.”

“I suppose I do,” he says, almost as an afterthought. Ben sets down his bowl, dusting his fingers. “To know how the war started is to know the origins of the universe. How could I possibly explain that?”

“I know of…that _._ ” _Sort of._ Rey makes a face. “Something about a wolf?”

Ben smiles, far different than the ironic, irritating twitch she so was used to seeing. This fits his face nicely and she hopes it doesn’t fade. “Close your eyes.”

* * *

 _Reach out,_ Ben tells her, where once he had been so close, lying in the sand at her side, he is now ages away.

The first time he said those words to her, she had held out her hands towards the sky, resulting in Ben’s throaty laugh. Swallowing the brief spell of embarrassment, Rey closed her eyes, though she still imagined the stars behind her eyelids. The silence had settled around them like a blanket, soon dragging her off into a world unknown. A meditation she never partook in before.

Rey hears his voice again after a time. _What do you see?_

Jakku, at first. The only place she has ever known. The life remaining to it – her flowers, her crops peering out from patches of green beneath the moonlight. The last remnants of a time long past. Death and decay swirl around them, an unforgiving landscape ready to eat away at all she has created.

_What else?_

Warmth from the campfire, stark against the chill blowing over the quiet desert. Peaceful enough. But Rey has also seen the violence of this landscape, the phantom pains a constant reminder that her situation could change at any time. 

_And between it all?_

A balance.

_Go farther. Reach out with your feelings. What do you see?_

Darkness. The cruel void of the Ginnungagap haunts her dreams, and she suspects it haunts his too. But even the Ginnungagap shows glimmers of other worlds and starlight a plenty.

 _With powerful dark comes powerful light._ For the balance is everywhere, a force permeating this world and those beyond. 

“But I don’t see you,” she whispers, voice lost to a realm much larger than herself. “Or me.”

For a moment, Rey thinks that Ben has gone. That he has left her to her thoughts, to this lonesome space within her where the questions of the universe still reside.

_We are the struggle of balance made flesh, little Vanir._

“The war—”

 _Is never-ending. Because_ we _are never-ending._

* * *

A son kills his father, throwing the Nine Worlds into disarray. For the gods of chaos, and rage, and change, the Emperor’s demise is welcomed with open arms. Long had the Aesir chanted for the death of that Skywalker, for it is _they_ who will walk the skies now.

_The Supreme Leader is dead._

And they mustn’t search far for a new one. For the pup who killed the Great Wolf has fangs of his own. If he needs to defeat all the Aesir in single combat to cement his rule, then so be it. This was Fated.

_Long live the Supreme Leader._

But for gods of light, order, life and fertility, they reject this change in seasons. They reject the unknown – they reject _him_ , even though they loathed the father who came before him, who killed Mother Earth and spat in the face of all they stood for. They would rather die than have a new tyrant to take his place.

_And die they shall._

The Bifrost between Asgard and Vanaheim shatters as a result. By whose hand, they will never know, as such knowledge has long faded from memory. But, as they do battle in the ruins of a bridge that once burned with all the colors of the rainbow, they know there is no turning back.

* * *

He tells her of Anakin, the Great Wolf, and his love for Padme Amidala that drove him rabid enough to tear her apart and create the Nine Worlds. He tells her of the gods borne of their love and the gods borne of their hate – forever at war, immortalized in the stars.

Beneath his brutish exterior, Ben is a storyteller at heart. Rey can tell by the ways his hands move, weaving the tall tales into existence, his gaze fixating on a horizon out of reach. She cannot help but listen to him in earnest, even when the flames dwindle and the bitter night chills her to the bone.

Ben is too enraptured to notice her shuffling closer in search of heat, nor does he notice the exhaustion hanging on the planes of her face.

She interrupts his flow with a slur of words, faintly realizing she hasn’t absorbed anything he’s said for the past few minutes. “Kylo Ren leads the Aesir into battle.”

“Yes.” He frowns, perhaps noticing her heavy eyelids. “Every time. And the Vanir strike up a vigorous opposition.”

“Kylo Ren,” she says the name again. “Your leader?”

His hands still. “That is irrelevant to the story.”

“Is it now?” Rey mutters. For all his stories, he seems vaguely absent in them. Even half-asleep, she knows Ben is hiding things from her. For now, though, she can’t find it in herself to be angry at him for that. _Tomorrow maybe._

Ben goes silent. She’s so tired she can’t even feel regret – though Rey knows she _should_ feel it. If he reverts back to his guarded self, all the progress they’ve made will have been for nothing.

“If I told you yes…” His voice falters, still grasping at the right words. “Would you still have saved me that night?”

Her brows knit together. “Of course.” His expression remains unwavering. “You don’t believe me.”

Ben turns on his side to face her. “If you knew what I’d done, little Vanir, you would also have your doubts.” His breath hitches on the last word, finally realizing just how close Rey’s wormed herself against him.

Without much for way of decorum – not that Rey considered herself very proper to begin with – her fingers skim the scar on his face. Rey hears a small intake of breath but she can’t be sure if it comes from her mouth or Ben’s. “I would have saved you either way.”

She closes her eyes. _I_ still _want to save you._ Though from what, Rey doesn’t know. Perhaps she will always see him as the armored wraith broken at the bottom of that chasm.

Before her thoughts give way to deep, peaceful breaths, Rey wonders how Ben will always see her. _As friend or foe?_ She knows the cadence behind his most recent words, as well as the sentiment thinly veiled in so many of his stories featuring the Aesir against the Vanir.

They are not on the same side.

Though if Rey knows anything, it is that enemies don’t sleep beside one another in the dead of night.


	3. Power

“This is it.” Rey pokes her finger inside the dusty clay jar, pushing aside the tendrils of barley trapped within. “The last of our grain.”

Ben throws the blanket off of his face, frowning. He stares up at the tarp ceiling before speaking. “You should eat more of it.”

“Shut up, Ben.” She rolls her eyes and sets the jar back down. “You’re nearly twice my size.”

Initially, they work in silence, Rey striking a rock against flint to start up a small fire and Ben using the chance to grind oil seeds and barley flour into Clay. Still, she can hear the question in his mind.

He finally gives voice to it. “How do you go about procuring more?”

“I have to grow it, obviously.” She flattens the Clay into crumbling disks, throwing it into her blackened pot, before speaking again. “There are some cereal fields about a day’s walk from here that are worth a glance. They were due for harvest and there is a small chance they haven’t dried up yet. Regardless, the land will have to be sown again.”

“Why would they be dry?”

She purses her lips. “I usually run a biweekly rotation to check on all the plots. Otherwise, my magick runs out and Jakku is excellent at devouring all life.”

“Every fortnight.” His face darkens with the realization. “You’ve been stuck with me for much longer than that.” Ben plucks the Clay from the pot. “Let me come with you.”

Her eyes narrow. “You haven’t healed fully.”

His jaw clenches. “Fresh air should do me nicely.”

“Ben—”

“It’s the least I can do,” he retorts with unprecedented tightness. “Besides, two bodies ought to make the harvest go by quicker. Wouldn’t you agree?”

 _I do,_ but for Rey, it somehow feels wrong to host a guest beneath her roof and put him to work. Despite their circumstances. “You’re so stubborn.”

Ben gives her a little shrug. “I guess we have that in common.”

 _By all the gods, if I don’t wring his neck at the end of this—_ Rey holds up a finger. “One condition.” His mouth curves into a premature smile. “You’ve been here so long and I know nothing about you. That’s no accident. You either answer my questions or you stay here.”

“Deal.” His impish expression doesn’t change. “So long as you answer mine.”

* * *

By the time they reach the top of Kelvin Ridge, her lungs burn with the intensity of a wildfire. Though she had been smart enough to cover her mouth with a spare cloth, minuscule sand particles find their way through regardless. Though it’s nothing compared to the sandpit in Ben’s mouth – he lugs globs of spit over the edge of the canyon and Rey can’t help but joke, “What happened to _fresh air should do me nicely_?”

Naturally, he ignores her, though the view provides another reason for their typical bickering to dwindle away into nothing. The highest vantage point on Jakku, the desert stretches on for miles into the horizon, not that that comes as a surprise to the both of them.

They focus their attention down into the canyon instead, fields of burnt, black grass spread along like a river of death.

“Over there.”

She stifles a gasp, along with her budding excitement. “That’s… impossible.”

“The heat playing tricks on us?” Ben suggests, but there is no conviction in his tone. They both can spot living plants within the fray, radiating out like a golden beacon.

They begin preparations: Ben sets up their tent to welcome them in the night when they will be too tired to even stand, while Rey sharpens her collection of sickles for the imminent harvest. A task she would have prepared for this morning had she anticipated this fortunate turn of events. Once finished, she straps what she can to her belt. The rest she gives to Ben to carry on his back.

Without further hesitation, they descend down the cliff like a pair of mountain goats – long ago, Rey found a cave full of their skulls on the other side of Kelvin Ridge. They are long dead now, which she considers fortunate considering they would have reduced the tall barely stalks into stubs.

The gods drop into the waning field below, drawn to the signs of life as rare and precious as gold. Still, she wonders, _How is it still here?_ She takes great care in timing her harvest and growth cycles accordingly. This should be a total waste by now. 

She casts a glare at Ben – nothing has made sense to her since his arrival.

“Well?” He raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to stand there gawking? Or are we going to work?”

She scowls. “You’re going to regret those words.”

Though Rey’s forced to admit that Ben was right. It _is_ easier to tend to the fields with another able body. The patch is much larger up close than it had been up on the ridge – it will take two days to clear. Alone, why, it might have taken Rey a week at least. And, for the first time in her life, tilling fields and planting seeds doesn’t feel like such a chore. Ben’s thorough questions about her upbringing provide a nice distraction from the sun beating down against their backs.

“Have you ever been off Jakku?”

“I’ve lived my whole life here, I think.” As she speaks, Ben shuffles through the salvageable seeds ripped from their dead casings, handing them off to Rey who has already riffled through the sand to create new planting plots. “It’s always been my mother and me. And Jakku – it was so full of life you’d have hardly believed it.”

He brushes the silver sweat gathered upon his brow. “Until she left you.”

She stares at his back, wishing he could face her fully so she might study his expression. “She’s coming back.”

Perhaps he hears the defensive tone she’s taken up and pivots accordingly. “And your father?” Ben shuffles to her side with the remainder of the seeds. For those Rey has already planted, she focuses her magick in the hopes that they will sprout. She can’t say what embarrassment will rise up if they don’t – he doesn’t need to see the lengths to which she has failed as a goddess.

“I don’t know.” Rey finally answers. She has no memories of anyone besides Kira and she’s never thought to question it. Even now. She shrugs.

“You’re lucky,” he muses. From what she can tell, he sounds rather genuine. “Like most fathers, he would’ve disappointed you.”

She expects a follow-up quip, but Ben remains silent. Amid their conversation, Rey has encouraged three plots to germinate, which she must be thankful for. It’s been a rather productive day, though Ben seems to disagree as he shoos her aside.

She takes up a sickle instead.

Rey decides to keep talking, even if Ben only listens. Though she can’t tell if this is because he has focused his attention on slitting open his hand with one of the sickles, watering the other plots she had made with his blood. She tries not to dwell on it for too long. Strangely enough, though, he seems to know what he’s doing.

“She had to go away from… I’m not sure.” Thoughtlessly, Rey slices through golden stalks of barely. “I was so young and it’s been so long. But she said she would come back soon. I don’t think it’ll be much longer now.”

Ben stands, dusting his hands. In far less time than it had taken her, dozens of plots sport new green heads from whatever sort of magick he’s worked on them. The fresh wounds on his hands have knitted into scars, likely to be gone by nightfall. Rey almost feels envious, though his success means a full belly for many moons to come.

“You seem so sure,” he murmurs, eyeing her growing pile of harvested stalks.

She pauses with the sickle. Her fingers brush against the back of her sweat-laden neck. “Of course.”

He hoists a load of grain across his shoulders. Rey stares at him – she convinces herself that it is because he has made such a remarkable recovery and has nothing do with the muscles rippling in his back. In a brief moment of curiosity, she wonders what it would be like to run her nails across them.

Her face heats up at the unbidden thought. “I feel like I’ve talked enough, Solo,” she squeaks out, before setting down the blade and hoisting up the grain alongside him. “Your turn.”

Ben swipes at his damp forehead again. “What do you want to know?”

She takes a quick glance at the ridge, knowing they won’t be able to climb back up the way they came with hands full of barley. They’ll have to go around it. She turns away to begin the trek, Ben following her like a lost pup.

“Well, I’ve told you all I can about my life story.” And with that, the stark realization that she had very little to tell him in the first place. “Start anywhere.”

Though Rey cannot see him, she can certainly envision the typical pout worn on his lips as he tries to craft a thoughtful yet evasive response. “I’ve… not seen my parents for a long time.”

“Why not?” She adjusts her grip on the load. “Sure, now you’re trapped here with me but I’m sure you had a life before this.”

Her words serve as an additional trap, a means of intentional prying. If Ben doesn’t answer, it’s in direct violation of their agreement. He must realize it too because he casts her a menacing glare.

“They weren’t always reliable,” Ben concedes, finally. “My father… Han is nothing special when you first meet him. But then you realize he’s absolutely insane. The first mortal from Midgard to fling himself through a portal and traverse all Nine Worlds.”

 _Nothing special_ , she snorts. “And your mother?”

More pouting, more thinking. “All the gods that roam the Nine Worlds trace their lineage back to the Earth Mother, the original creator. She is… _her_ , in a way.”

Rey nearly drops the barley upon the scorching sands. “Your mother is Padme Amidala from the stories?” she utters in a tone reeking of naivety. “The same one killed by Anakin? Whose scattered bones led to the creation of all _this_?”

“In a way,” he repeats, jostling the bushel upon his shoulders to scratch at the back of his head. “Her body created the Nine Worlds but her spirit still remains. She is reborn time and time again, Fated to birth a new god with every incantation.” Ben sounds unsure when he says this, though it mustn’t be easy to explain a complex, well-known phenomenon to someone so sheltered from the truth. “My true mother, so to speak, was a princess from Midgard.”

 _Midgard._ She makes a face. “So, you’re… human?”

“No,” he scoffs as if such an insinuation is downright implausible. “The scion of Amidala still retains the powers of a full-fledged goddess, just not the immortality.”

“Then you’re a demigod,” she says. “Your father is a—"

“No,” he repeats, with a hint more frustration. Though whether it’s from having to explain more or _something else_ , Rey cannot be sure. “It’s… complicated.”

It’s her turn to pout. “That’s not fair.”

Ben snorts. “You didn’t even know the most important goddess in the world was capable of reincarnation. It’s like lecturing to a blank slate.”

“You could at least _try_ ,” Rey mutters, though his somber face already signals that she has tread too far, crossed some invisible line that has shut him up once again.

They don’t speak throughout the rest of their walk back to camp. The sun begins to set upon their return, leaving Rey stuttering. Never has a day passed so quickly on Jakku before. She feels tired, yes, but not half-dead as any other day of hard labor is likely to reduce her to.

Rey sets out her bowls and jars by the piles of stalks. Ben sits across from her, mortar and pestle in hand, and they work like a team. For several hours, her nimble fingers shatter the seed pods, handing them off to Ben to grind into a fine flour. Easier work than tilling fields but no less important.

“You seem rather good at this,” she comments after a while, as her inquiries had long been silenced by the lull of menial repetition.

Ben glances up in surprise, perhaps also shocked to hear her voice after being absorbed into his work and thoughts. His hands pause. “When I was younger… I would help my mother prepare meals.” The hint of a sheepish smile draws attention to the flour marks painting his jaw. “There were times she would wake early to prepare bread. I could smell it when I woke. Other times I would try waking with her.”

“That sounds nice.” _Normal._ Something Rey might not expect from a scion of Amidala. “I did not think a princess would find the time to make bread.”

Another beat of silence passes. “Her kingdom was destroyed by a neighboring warlord. She spent many years alone, no servants to accompany her.”

“Oh,” Rey murmurs, unsure of how to respond. Then again, she may be no princess, has no idea what it is like to have a home taken from her, but _loneliness_ is an exceptionally familiar feeling. “Do you miss her?”

“In truth, I miss the bread more,” he says, nonchalant. His eyes seem to lighten. “I could make it.”

“Bread requires water. We have none.”

“That… isn’t exactly true.”

She looks at him, confused, and Ben uses that as a chance to reach across for the sickle at her side. He once again draws the blade against his palm. She flinches, still unsure why he considers such a thing necessary.

He grabs one of her bowls next, hovering his clenched hand over it.

Rey doubts him still. “Blood may be good for watering plants but I wouldn’t think it a good substitute—” Her jaw goes slack. The liquid dripping down into the bowl isn’t red at all. _Clear._

She struggles to find the words, watching as he fills the bottom of the bowl with… _water._ “And you’re telling me that isn’t magick?” Rey demands, finally.

“Not all gods can channel magick, little Vanir. Sometimes there must be a sacrifice.”

“I fail to see the difference.”

“It’s similar, a different… power, of sorts. Sometimes the only way to create something is to destroy, to take from something else. Taking from your own life force is the easiest power to master.” Ben flexes his now scarred hand as if to prove a point. “The Aesir are especially adept at this.”

She isn’t sure how to respond to that. Of all the times she could have used that neat trick to slate her thirst… “I hope you aren’t too adept,” she grumbles. Rey snatches his hand, smoothing a finger over his irritated cut. “I can heal only so many wounds.”

“Some wounds should be allowed to fester, little Vanir,” Ben muses but does not draw away. “It’s good to remember the sacrifices one makes in the world.”

She almost snorts. At the rate he’s going, he’ll have another fever by morning. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not Aesir then.”

A tender smile pulls at the corner of his lips. “In another life, I would have been tempted to disagree with you.” Again, Rey sees that flicker of a foreign emotion, that sign of an entire past she knows nothing about. “We’ll make the bread then? Tomorrow?”

She almost catches a glimpse of the boy that once was. “I don’t know.” Rey releases Ben’s hand. “We’ll need to wake early if we want to finish the harvest here. Then we could always move onto the next patch…” His stare hardens, immediately unnerving her. “What?”

“You must see the madness to all this, Rey.” Ben shakes his head. “Tending to this world, it isn’t a life.”

She takes several blinks before shaking her head in dismissal. “I have to work with what Fate has given me, Ben.” Rey isn’t sure why his words disappoint her so – something in Ben had led her to believe that he would understand. Not that she hasn’t been wrong before. “The alternative is to end up like the bones of all the creatures who came before me, now melting away beneath our feet. I won’t do that.”

Of course, that isn’t what he’s suggesting. She can feel those words on the tip of his tongue, but for whatever reason Ben swallows them.

“Jakku will never ever be green again,” he bites back instead. “Even with another Vanir goddess at your side, I don’t see how this landscape ever held life in the first place.”

“She was a goddess of cultivation and growth.” At the first sign of vulnerability, Rey curls in on herself and hugs her legs close to her chest. “And I’ve done nothing but disappoint her. I— she tried to teach me magick. She tried so hard and it should have been easy for me.”

“Nothing comes easy, Rey. You’ve proven that more than anyone.” His scowl dissolves into a small moment of weighted silence. “Sometimes letting go is the only way we can move forward.”

“I can’t,” she whispers. Rey glances up at the starry night. “Kira is coming back for me. Soon. I know it.”

Ben sputters, “Excuse me?”

She frowns. “Kira. My mother.” Her eyes trace the horror written across his face. A wave of confusion rises in her. “Did you know her?”

At those words, his face becomes purged of all emotion. Ben turns his head, breaking their stare and shielding her from any truth she may otherwise glean. “No, little Vanir. I did not.”

* * *

On the second day of work, Rey finds that the wall they had broken through boarded up again. He does not wake her when he rises before the sun. She finds the tent completely empty. The campsite seems just as abandoned, though she notices the leftover barley from yesterday already dried and pressed into flour, the sickles absent.

She dresses quickly to scale down the chasm wall.

Rey finds him in the thicket of the field, already sporting a light sheen of sweat from the bushels he’s harvested. She puts her hands on her hips. “You’re up early.”

“Or you’re late,” he muses without smiling, slicing through stalks with ease.

Her eyebrows furrow. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Ben shrugs as if it’s supposed to be a sufficient answer.

Rey can only huff in annoyance, wandering back towards her planting plots from yesterday with the hope that her anger is enough to fuel new growth.

The day wears on. With conversation stilted, Ben smiles no longer. She wants to understand what’s happened, what she’s said to lengthen the distance between them but Ben doesn’t even grace her with a glance.

 _He’s ignoring me,_ she realizes with a burning indignation. _And_ stars, _why does it hurt so badly?_ Rey, however, convinces herself that _that’s fine by her._ She has no reason to make amends for something she doesn’t even have any knowledge of. Two can play at that game.

Her frustration festers like an open wound. The blistering heat of high noon, for certain, does not make her more amenable.

“You’re cutting too high,” Rey snips.

Ben pauses mid-stroke. “You didn’t think to say anything sooner?”

She peers at him from over her shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Maybe if you hadn’t run off without me this morning, I could have told you.”

Naturally, Ben has no response to that. He lowers the sickle. “Like this?”

“No,” she says, mostly out of spite. Rey shakes her head and snatches it from his hands. “Just go back to taking care of the plots.”

An annoyed smirk pulls at his lips. “Ah yes, about time I was reduced to a walking sack of blood.”

“Yes, because you’d be ridiculously unhelpful otherwise.”

He growls, a hair away from saying more, likely something meant to twist a knife into her heart until Ben makes a silent decision that she isn’t worth the effort. Better on his part, of course, since it absolutely boils Rey’s blood down to the bone.

They stomp off in opposite directions.

Only then does Rey attempt to convince herself that fuming is good for productivity. Ben finishes before her, sooner than he had the day before. Rey herself only has a handful of stalks left before the barley will be ready to haul back to their camp. She expects him to walk over to her, still in his foul mood, of course, and help her carry it all up the cliff. 

He doesn't.

Ben brushes right past her to make his way back to the top of Kelvin Ridge, no indication that he intends to return. Rey stares at the bushels of barley left behind, finally deciding she has had enough.

It takes her several trips to take all the bushels back to their campsite but she does it anyway without complaint – after all, there was a life before Ben and one that will certainly continue once he has gone. With the last load of grain in her arms, she throws it down beside the campfire where Ben is seated, already cooking up fresh batches of Clay. At the very least he hasn’t spent the rest of the day moseying about.

Her entire body aches from today’s labor – swinging a sickle over and over again, the subsequent hikes up and down the ridge. Still, her mind is made up as she makes her way over to the tent. Rey grabs her staff. She rips a tent pole loose from the sand before making her way back to Ben and flinging it down at his feet. A puff of dust rises from the dry earth. He only cranes an eyebrow. “Whatever is going on with you, we’re going to work it out here and now.”

She lunges at him before he can protest. Ben barely catches her overhead strike. “Don’t be a child.”

They hold at a standstill, Rey glaring daggers. “I’m the child?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Watch me.” She tugs her staff out of his grip. With sheer luck, it cuts the air fast enough to catch him in the shoulder.

He rolls back with the impact, springing to his feet. His hands clench into fists at his side and those dark eyes finally lock onto hers with an intensity that makes her insides tighten. For a moment, Rey almost doesn’t recognize him.

She stalks forward and kicks the pole towards him. He picks it up in a sluggish haze. “We’re not doing this, Rey.”

She swings at his head in response, though a little too eager. Ben sidesteps her with ease and she stumbles under the weight of her extra momentum.

“Are you done?” he says flatly, though a little too soon.

Her next strike whips across his back. Ben stumbles forward with a grunt before twisting back to look at her. She sees a strange emotion glinting from the corner of his eyes.

“You’ve been sulking for hours. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” She punctuates _sulking_ and _hours_ with jabs to his chest until he pushes aside the blunt end of her staff. His thinly veiled frustration pleases her immensely. “Are you going to tell me why?”

He grits his teeth. “You’re imagining things.”

A wave of white-hot anger boils inside of her, refusing to be contained. “And you’re a _coward._ ”

With a flash of movement, her staff and his pole crack against one another. She isn’t quick enough, however, to catch the kick at her midsection that pushes her to the ground, lungs scrambling for air.

Rey climbs back to her feet, a hand curled around her aching side. No doubt blooming with a fresh bruise.

“You want me to fight?” Ben sneers, voice soft but lethal. His rage mirrors her own, blacker than the Ginnungagap and just as deadly as her own. “ _Fine._ ”

He snaps forward before she can blink. His next strike, aimed at her sore spot, she parries, but not without realizing the strength behind the intended blow. The impact rattles her aching arms. The weapon slips from her fingers. She grabs it in a new position, aiming for a throw, but Ben seems to anticipate the move. Her staff flicks to the side and the pole snaps against her bicep. Rey cries out before she’s able to smother the pain.

Ben’s grimace deepens, accompanied by a flash of guilt. He reaches out, not knowing that she has a viper’s vengeance. She smashes her staff into the side of his thigh – the weaker leg which had once kept him from walking.

He drops to one knee. The butt of her staff hovers against his cheekbone. Her merciless eyes scan the surprise on his face. “How easy you forget who fixed that body of yours.”

Ben’s growl is her first sign that she’s crossed a line. The second being his hands clamping down on her staff, followed by a brutal jerk that throws her forward. 

Quick thinking causes her to release her staff, which sails past Ben’s shoulder. She has no choice but to tackle him head-on. Unfortunately, Rey doesn’t stand a chance without her weapon. Ben barely has to push before gravity does his work for him.

Rey goes down for what she predicts is the last time. Of course, not without hooking her leg around his injured thigh and pulling him with her. Ben, too slow to catch himself, slams on top of her. But this doesn’t keep him from shackling both of her wrists in one hand. 

She spits at him. Anger blurs the edges of her vision, suspiciously similar to tears. Desperately, she searches for a way out until she takes in their compromised position.

Ben realizes too. “Rey?” His breath hitches. “Are you alright?”

Their anger dissolves as quickly as water on a sunny day. And, in Rey’s case, embarrassment rises to take its place. Stunned into silence, her tongue traces her bottom lip. _Stars, why am I staring at his mouth?_

His fingers ghost across her cheek. An unbidden thought makes Rey wonder if he can sense her rapid pulse. “Ben, I—”

Whatever spell between them shatters. A dark aura of remembrance shutters his face and Ben releases Rey from his hold.

“Wait—”

But he isn’t looking at her. He climbs to his feet, but not before snatching up his discarded tunic.

Her fists clench. “Where—” When Ben turns his back to her, Rey’s own rage throttles her, leaves her breathless. “Where are you _going_?”

“I’m going to find a way off this godsforsaken world.”


End file.
